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Every where around the world legislators are, by law, given certain privileges not usually accorded ordinary citizens.
This is so because, let’s say, they are the direct representatives of the people and thus must go about their duties without any impediments.
But of course, many, especially the gullible and vain, mistake this legal privilege to mean power, raw power that sets them apart from every one else. After all, aren’t they honorables? In the past and now, we still hear this vain quest for power translated as: “...Do you know who I am?”
In Chapter V, Article 42 of our constitution, it states clearly among other things that “...Members shall be privileged from arrest while attending, going to or returning from sessions of the Legislature, except for treason, felony or breach of the peace. All official acts done or performed and all statements made in the Chambers of the Legislature shall be privileged, and no Legislator shall be held accountable or punished therefor”.
This brings us to the disgraceful incident at the compound of Deputy Speaker Togbah Mulbah on Sunday. The entire incident could have been avoided. First, we must ask, As a lawmaker, does the Deputy Speaker know that when anyone, anyone is accused of a crime that person is obligated under the law to make a written statement? It doesn’t matter whether that person is the President or the Speaker or the Chief Justice or a street seller. All are supposed to be equal before the law or probably that is only in theory.
Suppose the Deputy Speaker had simply issued a statement to the police as required by law, could this disgraceful and embarassing incident have dragged on like it did? Instead, Deputy Speaker Mulbah chose to defy the very laws he helps to craft. This is where we feel the Deputy Speaker may have let power get to his head.
This is not to say we are pointing fingers at Honorable Mulbah. Far from that, for he is not alone. It could have been anyone. There are many who challenge the police everyday. True, the police may have their own problems but people have got to start respecting and obeying the police if we want an orderly society. We always beat up on the LNP, yet when they truly set out to perform their duties, like in the case with the Deputy Speaker, we shoot them down, so to speak. The police assaulted me first or the police was drunk or the police wanted a bribe are just few of the shots we fire at them.
Individuals, whether government officials or not have got to stop thinking that they are political gods and can get away with anything. When a person violates the law, there are victims who are harmed directly, like Patrolman Lexington Beah, and the law provides remedies. The law also recognizes that lawbreakers create harm to society as a whole, since the costs of lawbreaking are borne by society as well as by the direct victims. The law therefore exacts civil or criminal punishments on lawbreakers even if they are lawmakers. Of course, such punishments must come after they have been found guilty, first. |
